


Le morte d'Guinivere: A Mângâiere Interlude

by Triddlegrl



Series: Lycan Verse [3]
Category: Glee
Genre: Gwyn!Kurt, Lancelot!Blaine, M/M, Past life, interlude for the lycan series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 10:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1684841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triddlegrl/pseuds/Triddlegrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an account of the last days of Guinevere Queen of Camelot.<br/>** This is a side piece of Mângâiere and will not make a lick of sense if you haven't read up to date with that fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le morte d'Guinivere: A Mângâiere Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you not on tumblr I am posting this tidbit because after reworking the last chapters I realized this portion would no longer fit within the story (I had to do a lot of trimming). With the Arthurian portion of this story the goal has always been to give the reader enough insight into Blaine and Kurt's past experience that later in the series when destiny comes calling it carries the proper weight. There also has to be a balance, because they all have present lives to live and the past shouldn't supersede what's happening for them now, so as beautiful as this portion was to craft, and no matter how personally cathartic I found it, I felt the main story arch was better served without it. But since you've got such a long wait for another update I'm publishing it as an aside. Though my 'flashback' portions generally parallel with some theme in the present this won't spoil you for anything. Enjoy it as it is, though I can't promise it won't break your heart some. It has been my balm during a hard time.

  
It is not known what happened to Guinevere after she was rescued from the flames and carried away by Lancelot and his men. Some say that she lived at Dulac in sin with her lover and died birthing him a son, and others still say she was torn apart by guilt for her sins against her husband and fled to an abbey where she spent the rest of her days in penance.  
  
As for Lancelot, he warred with Arthur- those of his countrymen who were loyal to him and no longer willing to bend to Arthur’s rule at his side. Of them there was one they called Gwyn, who was never seen far from their lords side. Little is known about him besides the fact that he hailed from the queen’s homeland and that like Lancelot, he had once fought with Arthur.  
  
The day that Lancelot lost Gwyn he promised that he would follow him anywhere even unto death. It was an old practice between the two warriors, one they performed before every battle, but that battle had been different. The king himself had ridden out to the front lines, which meant he would have his circle with him. It was no small thing to know they would be fighting against men they had once called their brothers, even more than that there was the possibility that they would come to blows with their own flesh and blood.  
  
Lancelot was one of four who knew Sir Bedwyr’s true parentage. It was impossible for him not to, for the babe’s conception had nearly torn his heart in two. In his pain he had said many things to Gwyn that he later came to regret. Indeed there had been a time when he and Gwyn had feared they might never recover from what was broken between them.  
  
There were those who might have wished that it would, for their love had brought a kingdom crashing down. Whatever their sins, there were few who doubted that the love Lancelot bore for Gwyn of Gwent wasn’t strong. It had been strong enough to overcome their failings of each other, indeed strong enough to supersede any vow Lancelot had made to kings or land. Certainly it had been strong enough for him to come to love the child Gwyn had given his mate. Bedwyr was Arthur’s and there was some part of Lancelot that still loved his king a great deal; but more importantly Bedwyr was Gwyn’s and Lancelot would have gone to the devil to protect any piece of what was Gwyn’s.  
  
Lancelot lived every day for the man he called love, and it was a poisoned arrow which stole his love from him.  
  
One moment Gwyn had been beside him as he always was, bright and brimming with that love of battle that only a knight would understand, and the next he’d fallen and disappeared into the mud. Lancelot having felt the phantom bite of the arrow had fought his way to Gwyn’s side. The arrow embedded in Gwyn’s shoulder shouldn’t have been a lethal wound but Lancelot knew it was poisoned, as surely as if it was stealing through his own veins.  
  
There were three others who felt the moment that Gwyn fell. Among Arthur’s men Sir Bedwyr gasped where he sat atop his charger, clutching his side as he sweated and his eyes searched franticly about on the battlefield. Not far from him Galahad stumbled in his battle with a mounted knight and if not for Sir Percival striking down a lunging attacker he might have lost his head.  
  
The third one who shared Gwyn’s pain was the king himself.  
  
It had been a long time since Arthur had felt anything over the torn and twisted bonds he shared with Gwyn, but his whole face drained of blood as the certain knowledge came to him that his mate was not long for the world. Gwyn would be taken and there was no longer time for Arthur to repair what had sickened and died between them. They had truly failed each other.  
  
Gwyn screamed a curse as Lancelot tore the arrow free of his shoulder.  
  
“Lancelot…” he’d beseeched on shuttered breath, clutching the other to him with weakening hands.  
  
“Hush.” Lancelot tried desperately to sooth him, lifting him even as he spoke. “We will get you help. Don’t be afraid.”  
  
“I am afraid. I never meant to leave you…”  
  
“You will not leave! Don’t speak. Hush!”  
  
Lancelot had left the battle that afternoon and ridden for the abbey like a man possessed. Arthur had called a retreat and ordered no one to pursue either Lord Dulac or his men. It was an odd gift for an enemy but the king’s heart would not stop its lament that these men had once been his friends. Gwyn had been his mate.  
  
Now when it had ceased to matter Arthur could not ignore the fact that it had been he who betrayed Gwyn first. He had betrayed them both by ignoring his heart and taking a mate he didn’t love. He’d ignored his heart even when it had told him he would never be able to love Gwyn as he deserved. Lancelot’s only crime was that he hadn’t ignored his.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Arthur spoke to the empty air of his tent but neither of the people he needed to hear were there for it to matter.  
  
When Bedwyr swept into the tent unannounced Arthur already knew what he had come to ask.  
  
“Go Bran, and make sure that Galahad goes with you.”  
  
Arthur knew that the young knight would think it was his duty to stay, and that he would regret the choice. A man should not live with so many regrets.  
  
When Bedwyr had left the tent Arthur did something he had not done in many years: he opened the bond between himself and his mate.  
  
He reached but he was not answered. There were too many years of neglect and betrayal between them for Gwyn to come running to his call now but Arthur kept trying.  
  
He called endlessly throughout the night, like screaming into an empty void, until finally he received an answer.  
  
The touch was fleeting, but as unmistakable as the voice he heard come quietly after it.  
  
 _‘Arthur, please…’_  
  
The king did not say he was sorry once more. There was no need, for he and the other shared such pure sorrow that it went deeper than the chill of neglect, the bright burn of rage, the brunt and wicked blows of betrayal. It unified them in a way their love once had, a sharp blade cutting through bondage.  
  
 _“…please”_  
  
The voice begged and the king cried. As he had known it must be with Bedwyr and Galahad, he knew that the only gift he could give it was to let it go.  
  
~*~ ~*~ ~*~  
  
When Sir Bedwyr the Bran found Sir Galahad he was kneeling on the floor of his tent on all fours. He was nearly naked, head bowed deep in prayer. Bran saw his blood brother’s lips trembling silent words as his hands clutched clumps of grass, the rippling and shifting of muscle and bone beneath his skin betraying the beast poised to leap from within.  
  
“Do you really think that will help? That the gods care so much about the plight of one man?” Bran asked and Galahad tensed at the sound of his voice, sitting up to shake the sweat from his sable hair.  
  
“Go away Bran,” he sighed without turning to look at the other man. Bowing his head again he continued with his prayers.  
  
“Or is it that you pray for strength?” Bran ignored him to go on. “Tell me Galahad do you ever tire of parroting scriptures and rules? Because you’ve bored me to death with it.”  
  
“Bran.” Galahad growled in warning, and you’d think that having lost a hand to a fight with him before, that Bran would show more concern for that tone but oddly enough they had actually been closer since that battle—or so Bran had hoped. Galahad was almost pathetically easy to guilt trip. Mayhap it came from being raised in a convent and consistently told to apologize for his existence.  
  
“He’s dying Galahad. This will be our last chance to see him. Likely we are already too late…” Bran waited and when there was still no reply he cursed and grew angry. “My god you are cold. Do you truly hate them so much?! First to betray them and now not even to see father at his last?”  
  
“Father? The only father I have ever known is the man who let me think he left me and my mother to shame and abuse. The same father whose desire for bonded man meant more to him than his honor or his son!”  
  
Bran had heard all of this before, and it wasn’t that he couldn’t sympathize, but Galahad spent so much time dwelling on the ills of the past that he pushed away the very thing he wanted when it was being offered to him. Now it was going to be taken away forever and they were wasting time.  
  
“You know damn well why he would not marry Elaine! Can you not bring yourself to forgive them even now? How came your heart to be so hard?”  
  
“Every day my heart longs to forgive them. Do you think it easy to resist? I forgive my fathers, I declare myself no better than the lowest beast and a slave to self-service. I vowed I would be different. I vowed that I would always stand by what was just. They are traitors. I know this and yet… Bran it’s so very hard. It would serve me so well to forgive them…” Galahad’s voice failed him. He swallowed thickly, squeezing his eyes tightly for a moment before he finally opened them again and looked toward where Bedwyr stood.  
  
“You must think the worst of me,” he stated tonelessly.  
  
“Aye, I often do. You’re a proud fool.” Bran had no trouble admitting. He crossed the space between them and knelt before Galahad until they were eye to eye. “But you are still my brother. And they are still our parents.”  
  
“They are my parents not yours.” Galahad reminded him as he always did. For a man who cried disdain on his fathers at every turn he was awfully possessive of them. “Lancelot is not your father.”  
  
“And Elaine is not your mother, but I do not see you arguing semantics there.” When Galahad bit his lip and made no rebuttal Bran pressed on. “Gwyn gave me away too. I may not know what is like to be called bastard but being an orphan is little better. Neither of my parents could be there for me, but Lancelot was when he could be and he was there for you. Do you think that was less than love for us?”  
  
For a moment Galahad looked as if he would be swayed, the yearning blossoming on his face as stark as the freckles that dotted his nose but then he glanced away and muttered sourly, “Good deeds to assuage a guilty conscience.”  
  
Bran was tempted to hit him over the head with a rock.  
  
“And I suppose the way you prostrate yourself before god and shake and cry like a babe is all for the pleasure you get from theatrics?”  
  
Galahad huffed in frustration and pushed Bran away with a frustrated snarl. Bran could see over the curl of his lip that the fangs of his wolf were extending. “You are a perfect son aren’t you? So tell me, should I prove myself their son and go to the bedside of traitors against my kings will? Tell me what you would have me do!”  
  
“I would have you at my side, allowing yourself for one blessed evening to be a man with all of the selfishness that may require, so that we might mourn the man that gave us life and damn everything else!” Bran snarled right back. “But if you cannot then it may behoove you to know it would break no vows.”  
  
“Of course it would break vows. We are--”  
  
“We are Arthur’s men and he has given us leave!” Bran interjected and Galahad fell into shocked silence.  
  
When he spoke again he looked so young and lost, it was a wonder that such an expression could find itself on the face of a man fully grown.  
  
“The king has granted us leave? Why…. Why would he…?”  
  
“Because he loves them,” Bran confessed, though he felt that Galahad should have known. Was there no one who abhorred the futility of this war they fought, brother against brother, and friend against friend? Bran was sick with it, down to his very bones.  
  
“He loves you, Galahad,” he implored, reaching for the other knight’s hand. “He’s far wiser with your troubles than he is with his own. Learn from our king’s example brother. Do not let your piety keep you from making things right with them.”  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
“Don’t touch him!” Lancelot ordered the white robbed abbotess he’d found hovering over Gwyn’s bedside with a wooden cross and the two attendants she had with her. Gwyn was a sight to see, stripped down to his leggings and curled tightly upon the bed the holy sisters had laid him on, body wracked with shivers and dank with sweat. Lancelot had only left his side for a minute to see to the men who had followed him, but it had been long enough for the abbotess to decide that Gwyn required not only last rights but a bloodletting. The spike of terror Lancelot had felt from Gwyn was the only reason he’d been able to stop it. He’d rushed in to find one of her attendants holding a crude wooden bowl under Gwyn’s arm and the other preparing to cut him with an ornately decorated ceremonial knife.  
  
“He is dying, my lord Dulac,” the dour faced abbotess insisted with a sniff as she lowered her cross. The white haired woman looked toward Gwyn with an expression of intense dislike. “I know who he is, and who you are.” Though there was nothing outwardly threatening in the woman’s tone, Lancelot tightened his grip on the limb he held, roughly pulling the abbotess away from Gwyn’s bedside by her thin arm.  
  
He did not know what the abbotess thought she could know about either of them. No one outside of the Circle knew Guinevere’s true identity and they’d been careful during Gwyn’s time at Joyous Garde. While it was freeing for Gwyn to no longer have to pretend to be a woman, the church was no more receptive of men fornicating with other men than it was of men turning into wolves.  
  
He and Gwyn would be twice damned in any holy man’s eyes, and indeed the abottess regarded him with a gaze burning so bright with righteousness he feared it would singe his skin.  
  
“His blood is full of poison, his heart even more so. He must be purified or risk eternal damnation” she insisted and Lancelot fought hard not to snap his teeth at her. Beyond Gwyn and himself he had his men to think about. They would be hunted too if the abbey decried him a demon.  
  
“I said leave him be. Either help him or leave here, but I will not let you cut him!”  
  
“Leave without confession?” She scoffed. Every soul must have confession before it passes. That is God’s law.” Her eyes were peeling through the armor he wore as she derided, “Some need it more than most.”  
  
For years Lancelot had waged a war against his desires. His life had been one tightly held secret after another, a constant game of mirrors and shadows and lies to avoid the retribution of some party or another. It had gotten him here, to this cold dark room with the man he loved writhing in the throes of death and calling for him.  
  
And it all ceased to matter. Nothing mattered so much as Gwyn. So Lancelot let her see the beast behind his eyes, the animal that was so much a part of him he sometimes forgot where the beast ended and the man began. He let her see how very much he hated her and those like her who had their hand in the bitter end he found himself in now. He had nothing more to fear from her and her ilk, for after Gwyn there would be nothing left to loose.  
  
“Get out” he growled through his teeth. The woman sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of them extended and sharp and Lancelot felt a satisfying surge of pleasure at the sound. He ignored the sound of her two attendants fleeing the room in terror and dragged the shaking holy woman to the door.  
  
He shoved her up against the wall near the open door and cut off the woman’s terrified wail with a violent shake. His voice came out grated through strained vocal chords as his body teetered on the edge of change and he held onto control by just a hairs breath.  
  
“Take your _piety_ and pray to your god that he survives, because if he doesn’t I will show you the hell you think you know so well. Touch him, or me and mine again, and I’ll send you and every man woman and child within these walls to the devil.”  
  
He let the quivering woman drop to the floor in a heap at the first desperate nod of agreement and did not bother to watch her flee. His eyes were for Gwyn who had turned in his bed to watch the confrontation. The younger man’s eyes were glassy, his breathes shallow and labored, but his pale lips tilted into a hint of a smile as he regarded his lover.  
  
“That…” Gwyn’s hoarse voice tapered off as his face twisted up in pain and he panted for breath. “…was not at all chivalrous of you.”  
  
“To hell with chivalry.”  
  
Lancelot strode for Gwyn’s side, kneeling over his lover’s exhausted form to cradle Gwyn’s fevered cheeks between his palms and press their brows together. “To hell with them,” his throat tightened on the words as Gwyn shivered violently through another shudder of pain.  
  
“It’s cold.” The admission was spoken in a voice so small and thin it tore at Lancelot’s heart, and without another word spoken Lancelot got into bed beside him, though it was barely large enough for one man let alone two, and wrapped his arms around Gwyn to lend him warmth.  
  
Gwyn tensed and then writhed through another wave of pain and Lancelot bit his lip, silencing the cry he would have made. If these were to be their last moments he would utter no sounds of distress. There would be time enough for wails and moans later, endless years of it, but for now he would be as strong as Gwyn needed him to be.  
  
When the tension had left Gwyn’s body and his groans quieted to whimpers Lancelot slid his hand between the strands of his sweat soaked hair and kneaded his scalp, shushing him as one might a frightened child woken from nightmares. Gwyn clutched him as tightly as his weakened body would permit.  
  
“You need to rest, Gwyn. Don’t tire yourself.”  
  
“I cannot call the wolf… I cannot fight this,” Gwyn whispered desperately, hands tightening where they clutched Lancelot. “It is meant to kill one of our kind… meant to kill me.”  
  
Lancelot swallowed down the surge of renewed rage he felt, for he had begun to summarize as much as soon as it became clear that Gwyn could not shift to dispel the poison. This was the work of magic, targeted specifically at them by their enemy. Perhaps it was the work of the Merlin, mayhap even ordered by Arthur himself. Had this been Arthur’s work? After everything it shouldn’t have been that hard to believe. Arthur had been prepared to execute them both once before, but it still made something within Lancelot ache and throb with the pain of betrayal.  
  
“I won’t leave you,” he promised. Gwyn relaxed against him, for they both knew the words meant more than they could convey. They were penance, for the time Lancelot had left before.  
  
For a time they did not speak as Gwyn fought desperately to stay and he went colder and colder in Lancelot’s arms. Lancelot wanted it all. He wanted to be spared nothing, to be with Gwyn in every angle and dip of his person so that there was no chance that he would feel alone at the end… so that he might stay. For surely if Gwyn were as a part of his blood and bone as he felt, nothing in the world could take him away.  
  
But they were not one, and they never had been. Always Gwyn had belonged to another and never had Lancelot detested it more than he did now.  
  
For he held the man he loved within his arms, losing him to the relentless grip of death and into the realms he called another name.  
  
 _“Arthur, please… please.”_  
  
Lancelot bit his tongue till it bled, stifling the cry that welled up from a core that felt hot and splintered, tears stinging as they slid from his eyes.  
  
And then, like a miracle Gwyn was clutching him and Lancelot felt his touch everywhere as brilliant as sunlight. They were finally together in the way that had always been denied to them. There was another there, a distant presence so small and full of sorrow it seemed almost unkind to feel such unfettered joy in its presence but Gwyn and Lancelot could do nothing for it.  
  
For the first and last time in their lives, they felt what it would have been to be mates.  
  
They shared every flicker and wave of pain between their bodies, every whispered word and fleeting thought.  
  
 _‘ Can I confess to you, Love?’_  
  
‘Save confession for the damned. You have nothing to feel shame for.’  
  
‘Oh, but I do. I do. For them… for them I am shamed. I am cast the yellow of a coward.’  
  
As Gwyn’s fingers pressed against his cheeks and Lancelot drowned in a gaze of stormy blue they shared a memory: A babe opening its mouth to the world with a scream. They called him Galahad for it meant pure, and to them nothing had ever been purer than what they’d held in their arms.  
  
 _‘It was fear which swayed me. The fear of discovery, the fear of watching you die for the weakness of my flesh. It was selfishness, for I would have done anything but lose what little happiness I had, and so I betrayed him. I left him to the cruelty of strangers, to face alone the scorn for my sins!’_  
  
‘… You made the only choice you could. The kingdom would have fallen to war.’  
  
‘It has fallen anyway! I let it take my life and it has come to nothing!’  
  
Between them was the memory of Gwyn at the tower window at Camelot, staring down below at a boy, flushed pink with youth and lit from within by whatever spark of mischievousness always seemed to be tucked within the corner of his grin. Ravens filled the castle yard, making racket as he ran about brandishing a branch he’d fashioned into a wooden staff. He went suddenly still and looked up, as if he could feel the queen’s gaze upon him and Gwyn shrank away from the window.  
  
 _‘I die and one day so shall you. Galahad will be alone and Bedwyr…. oh my poor Bran. He inherits the crown. It will crush him and crush his sons as it did their father’s before them and on and on until there is nothing left. So I confess… I confess… I regret all that I have done.’_  
  
Lancelot curled Gwyn’s body up against his chest. His shivers were so weak now Lancelot could barely feel them, the cast of his eyes low as the lids drooped closed and the light of his aura faded. Lancelot swallowed and tasted blood.  
  
“It is done” he said, voice roughened with pain. “We made our choices. Regret what has come to pass but say not that you regret the love that we have shared.”  
  
Gwyn could not speak, but they no longer needed such things. Lancelot felt his answer deep inside more present than a whisper, firm and gentle like a touch, _‘Never’_.  
  
It was a small thing, but beautiful nonetheless. Lancelot kissed his brow.  
  
 _“I promised I’d follow you even unto death, but now feel I must stay… for Galahad and Bran.”_ Beneath his lips, Gwyn shuddered.  
  
 _“Aye, only hold me for a while longer. I would be afraid without you…. What is beyond here do you think?”_  
  
Beyond death? Lancelot had no idea for he had no hope of the holy sister’s heaven and no stomach for their hell.  
  
 _“I don’t know what is beyond this. Only that if there is any part of me that is infinite, beyond here I am with you. I am with you wherever you go.”_  
  
“Good. Then I am not afraid.”  
  
And so it was that Lancelot Dulac lay with Gwyn of Gwent while he breathed his last.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully you're okay after that. I just wanted to remind you that neither of them is dying in the present. :) That's not a spoiler since we already know there's a sequel. I just thought I'd mention it again in case anyone was fretting that death was where I was drawing my parallels between past and present. Also, I had Alex and Sierra's version of Say Something on repeat while writing this portion and I had such an experience, that I feel I owe it some thanks. Go have a listen [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJqSgW1Ew4) and download it off itunes [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Falbum%2Fsay-something-x-factor-usa%2Fid771566335&session_token=Y7RfXJ2MtZU2UkH6jxSlKtDoMS98MTM5NDM5ODQ3N0AxMzk0MzEyMDc3) to support these wonderful artists.


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